We have seen with Amy, Cassandra, and Haohmaru that you can have a similar weapon and still be a completely different experience now.
To say nothing of the other dozen characters they have done this with in previous titles.
For Li Long, he has two nunchucks but maybe they could do a three sectioned one or something. If Rock came back, I know they'd give him his onslaught mace and a different moveset.
I would have to think it would be dual nunchuku again. As you probably know, in the U.S. console port of SE, they transformed Long's nunchuks into an approximation of a three-quarter staff purely to get around goofy censorship issues that existed with nunchuks in U.S. media at the time. Or so the communit scuttlebutt has long held-- and its more or less plausible if you are familiar with the legal history of the moral panic surrounding these weapons in the 90's. Anyway, it looked awful, in that a three-quarter staff is an enitrely different type of weapon that uses entirely different motions and biomechanics in its basic application. And even more to the practical side, there's no way they are going to bring back this character after such a long delay and not make him more or less true to his original design--especially in this of all games, and especially if it means having to start a character from scratch rather than using his previous appearances as a strong template, with a moveset built around his legacy moves.
As to the more central question of whether he is likely to be added at all, I have to say I think he's just been barely edged out. First, I do think that while it's not a fait accompli that there will be a third season, it's certainly a much more likely than not situation. And based on the number of characters that would be available if the game proceeded through three season passes, I always figured there was just enough space for three DLC guests and the exact nine legacy characters that were necessary to re-composite the classic era (SCIII and before) main roster: Tira, Amy, Cassandra, Setsuka, Hwang, Yun-seong, Li Long, Rock, and Aeon/Lizardman.
But that was before Hilde through that possibility off. I always reckoned she was also a strong candidate herself, but her having been added means someone gets left out in the rain, since I think a third season will almost certainly included a guest (man do I hope it's Tifa--I can't say that enough). And I think the two classic era characters most likely to be dropped are Li Long and Yun-seong. So, long odds for Li Long at this point. Personally, I'd be thrilled to have him back though; his style is one of the best in SCIII:AE, an under-appreciated fact today.
